Phuket Skills Gap Grows Wider as Pay Laws Bite

PHUKET: About 70 percent of all workers on Phuket were from other Thai provinces or from overseas, the Director of the Phuket Provincial Employment Office, Noppadon Ploy-Audee, has revealed.

While Phuket needed thousands of workers, employers were hiring those with low qualifications because the law now said that people with degrees had to be paid 15,000 baht a month, he added.

And Khun Noppadon said that 7867 employers on Phuket legally paid 67,883 Burmese workers - but there were official requests for 125,551 Burmese. Of the official workers, 46,092 had verified their identity.

At the same time, he said, workers from Asean nations - especially the Philippines and Vietnam - were already filling positions on Phuket in advance of the 2015 Asean Economic Community.

The Filipinos worked as entertainers or Soi Bangla touts while the Vietnamese were mostly becoming retail outlet workers.

He added that Thai officials needed to ''open your minds'' to the need for skilled workers from overseas to operate as guides - especially to cater for Russian tourists - or to work in the diving industry.

But he added that his office employed six staff whose job it was to arrest illegal workers.

Of the workers from other provinces who came to Phuket, the largest segment came from Nakkorn Si Thammarat.

Khun Noppadon also said that 7164 work permits for foreigners on Phuket had been issued or renewed in June. Of these, 3735 were for Phuket City, 2411 for Kathu and 1017 for Thalang.